Irrelevant Beer & Relevant Coffee

In this day and age, it only makes sense when breweries expand their horizons by delving into new offerings such as non-alcoholic beverages, coffee, and/or seltzer beverages. But how often do you hear about a coffee roaster brewing beer? Now that’s a new one…

Enter Relevant Coffee, which was founded by Mitch Montgomery in 2014. Having worked as a barista, then operating as a pop-up and roasting beans for a few years, he decided to open his own café in 2017. Joining him in the endeavor as operations director, roaster, and co-owner was Brian Clemens, a veteran of 10 years in the coffee industry. Relevant’s original location was situated just two blocks north of their current location, which opened in 2019, at Main & East 17th Street in the Arnada neighborhood of Vancouver, Washington.

One of Mitch’s regulars in the early years was Sebastian Lynch, then a brewer at Trap Door, just up the street from Relevant. Lynch would eventually leave brewing in 2020 and take on the role of starting Relevant’s cold brew program in early 2021. This fortuitous relationship embodies the brand’s ethos of “community over competition.”

To set their cold brew program apart from others, Montgomery and Lynch worked on creating their own unique vacuum extraction process that varies from traditional extraction. This vacuum method not only increases the saturation of the coffee, it’s also done so at a lower boiling point, providing for a turnaround time of minutes as opposed to hours or days. The results, a more complex and easy drinking cold brew, speaks for itself.

Within no time at all, Mitch and Sebastian began ruminating over the idea of opening a brewery at the Main & 17th location. Once again, fortune was on their side as Lynch’s best friend happens to be Quin Tinling, a veteran brewer of 17 years. Not only does Quin understand how to run a brewery, but he also possesses the acumen to brew more nuanced, classic styles. Having worked at Hopworks, Wayfinder, and Level Beer in Oregon, then at Pinthouse in Texas, not to mention a brief stint at Joseph James Brewery in Las Vegas, Quin brings the chops necessary to put Irrelevant Beer on the map.

Upon Tinling’s arrival in 2023, Irrelevant Beer sprang to life that September, at first operating a pop-up taproom in their production space, via their 17th Street roll-up. This past February, Irrelevant opened their fully-formed brewpub space featuring 12 taps and 2 Czech-style Lukr faucets, and it’s also the new home of the popular smash burger pop-up Goon Burger.

While Relevant and Irrelevant share the same building, production space, and an owner in Montgomery, they operate as two separate entities. On one side of their sizable production space you’ll find a 10bbl brewhouse along with the recent addition of 3 20bbl and one 15bbl fermenters, increasing their capacity in excess of 2000bbls annually.

This recent expansion will enable a more steady supply of flagship beers, plus more one-off releases such as their coffee-infused, fresh hop, and seasonal lager offerings. On the other side of the production space you’ll find their custom built vessels designed to extract their own cold brew from beans roasted on-site between Relevant’s ethereal, European-inspired café and the joint production space.

At Day One we’ve been grateful to partner with both Relevant Coffee and Irrelevant Beer as their home for distribution in Oregon since the brewery opened just over two years ago.

Relevant Coffee’s current offerings include three varieties of canned cold brew: Main Street Nitro, Cold Brew with Ranger Cacao, and Ethiopia Cold Brew. All three are available through New Seasons Market, Market of Choice, and a variety of independent bottle shops and stores throughout the state.

While Irrelevant has yet to offer a definted IPA flagship, as they’ve focused on a wide variety of rotating Hazy and West Coast offerings, there are a number of offerings they’ve returned to a few times such as Sundressed Wheat Ale and Arnada NW Lager. They’ve also brewed quite a few collaborations with Day One brands including Celestial Beerworks, Grains of Wrath, Great Notion Brewing, Living Haus Beer, Ruse Brewing, and Vice Beer.

Two weeks ago, Irrelevant Beer cerebrated their second anniversary with 6 new releases, including collaborations with Brujos Brewing & de Garde Brewing, most of which have already headed to Oregon bottle shops and taprooms. Be sure to keep and eye out for Irrelevant’s song-titled beers on draft and in cans, as we anticipate their presence in Oregon to only grow over the coming years!

Content sourced from: Irrelevant Beer & Relevant Coffee, New School Beer, Clark County Today, and The Columbian.